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 Nothing commercial about great ending
Posted: Monday October 04, 1999 05:27 PM
Got a comment or question for Dr. Z? Click here. They are trying to turn football into a corporate toy, with their luxury boxes and licensing fees to buy tickets. They are trying to junk it up, hype it to scream intensity, mush up our brains by surrounding it with commercials and dumb-dumb interviews masquerading as information. They have almost done it, but the game won't let them go all the way. It's simply too dramatic, too compelling. I watch my weekly overload of live and recorded action, half the time through the cracks in the fingers covering my eyes. The uniforms, my God. Just what Pete Rozelle always feared -- turning the players into billboards. The league never announced when the ban was lifted on corporations renting advertising space on team uniforms, but all of a sudden, everyone seems to have a Nike swoosh on his shoulder. Does NFL really stand for Nike Football League? The network tootsie on the sidelines: "Coach, what do you have to do this half?" "First of all, we've got to cut down mistakes, then we've got to ..." And my wife, who's passing by, finishes the lock-brained litany: "... establish the run so we stay out of third-and-long and on defense mix it up and keep 'em guessing and ..." She knows it by heart. All faces are deadly serious as, once again, this drivel is fed to us non-stop. The John Elway beer ads, oh, boy, we're commercializing the legendary here, shamefully exaggerating what needs no exaggeration. "On any given day, he could pile up yardage, elude tacklers and score at will." (Score at will? Then why not 100 points a game?) "Once, when hit by a 290-pound linebacker ..." (Never, in the history of the NFL, has there been a 290-pound linebacker.) And so on until the next commercial, and you see the two gaboons in their pickups. "We sell'd every one in the county." Huh? Are English teachers watching this? Stop! I scream at my babbling TV. I am getting gibberished out! And then it is all forgotten, because Brett Favre is bringing his team out of the huddle, down by four to the Vikings, and the clock shows less than two minutes left, and you are a lucky witness to the kind of drama that doesn't come from a writer's pen. And as much as the people who control the sport have tried to cheapen it with their commercial junk, they can't take this away from us. Some of us have become historians of the two-minute offense and the quarterbacks who seem to enter a different sphere of consciousness in this most excruciating situation. I was the Jets beat man during Joe Namath's career, and I've got every one of his two-minute drives recorded and annotated. And the memories, good Lord. He could have struggled for the entire game, but suddenly two minutes are left, and there he is, cock, fire, zzzzip! The offense, suddenly energized, dashing in and out of the huddle. The defense, which had been in control for most of the game, suddenly coming unhinged. "Cover, dammit!" Elway, fielding the shotgun snap with one hand after it has bounced off Steve Watson's hip, and completing the pass to keep the winning drive against Cleveland alive. Joe Montana, having to call timeout because he's hyperventilating so badly during the winning drive against Cincinnati in Super Bowl XXIII. Dan Marino and the fake-spike TD pass that changed the destiny of the New York Jets. And all we can do is make sure we get it right and try to preserve it historically. And late at night, after the last highlight show has shut down, I run the tape back and watch Favre against the Vikings all over again, because this was one of the great two-minute drives. First-and-10 on the Packers 23, Favre scrambles to his right, does a quick pivot back to his left, stops, plants in an exaggerated wide-legged stance, and zzzzip! Twenty-two yards to a 23-year-old wideout named Corey Lamon Bradford from Hinds Community College and Jackson State. Clock shows 1:16 and running. Trouble on Favre's set-up next play. Duane Clemons, the defensive left end who had a magnificent game for the Vikings, has Favre around the legs; he's got him wrapped, but somehow, from somewhere, a hook shot of a pass materializes to the money back, Dorsey Levens, who breaks two tackles and gains 10. Timeout at 1:07. Ball on the Vikings 45. No rush next play. Vikings in a zone, playing coverages. Favre looks downfield, looks for his second read, then his third, finally dumps the ball off to Levens for 13. Clock shows 1:01. Next play he's got Bradford, running a square-in on the Vikings 21, a roundhouse delivery, à la Sonny Jurgensen, that hits the receiver in stride, but the ball is dropped. Fifty-nine seconds left. Second-and-10 on the 32. Six yards on the next play to wideout Bill Schroeder, running a crossing pattern, and the Packers take their last timeout at 0:47. Third-and-four, and Favre goes to Levens again on a little fan pattern to the left, but Levens, fighting for first-down yardage, doesn't get out of bounds, and the clock shows 0:40 and running. And running. And you wonder what's taking so long to get off the fourth-and-one play. "He can't spike the ball because it's fourth down," John Madden says on TV. "He should have thrown the ball beyond the first-down marker." "He'll have to hurry now," Pat Summerall says. The Packers are taking lots of time to set this one up. Schroeder is set as a single wide receiver to the right, Tyrone Davis, the tight end, is the inside man on trips-formation left, split end Antonio Freeman is in the middle and Bradford is wide. The ball is snapped with 17 seconds left, all receivers run to the post, Schroeder and Freeman are jammed at the line, Davis and Bradford get clean releases. Somehow cornerback Jimmy Hitchcock has tried to give Bradford a slight jam 10 yards downfield, but then he overplays the outside, with no inside help, and Favre, after a quick pump fake to Schroeder, lays the ball into Bradford's hands in the end zone. Afterward, the camera catches Favre, his shirt off, lying on a bench and getting oxygen on the sidelines, totally exhausted. They have to help him off the field. The Vikings' Randy Moss comes over and gives him a hug and says something in his ear. And then the day is over. Put it in the file. Stamp it SAVE and turn out the lights. And the rest of it, all the idiot commercials and the trash and the phony hype -- well, it's merely work for the guys with the brooms.
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